


at the end of the day, knowing not what it means

by orphan_account



Category: Bad Girls
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-18
Updated: 2010-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-13 18:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Escaping Larkhall is only the beginning: a happier ending for Yvonne. Title from ‘Ordinary’ by The Alternate Routes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	at the end of the day, knowing not what it means

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lyrstzha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrstzha/gifts).



She didn’t think she would make it. How many times had she tried to best Fenner, and failed? How many times, even, had she tried to escape?

*

Yvonne started work at the dry cleaning place when she first got here – it was more or less only used by ex-pats, which made it a bit more dangerous, but she couldn’t speak a word of Spanish.

It was a grind. Prison was shit, but there she was still the Top Dog; there were people around she knew and loved, like Babs, and Denny, and the Two Julies. There was Lauren. And what with being a big man’s wife, before that… well, it had been a long time since she’d had a real minimum wage job.

*

If she’d have stopped to think about it, she never would have thought that it would all come off. But when she emerged from the tunnel, there was a car waiting, just like she’d arranged.

(Her hit orders might not have been worth a shit anymore, if Fenner’s ‘pizza’ was anything to go by, but she still had contacts.)

In retrospect, she thinks it might have been when she saw the car that she started to believe it – started to believe that she was a free woman.

*

The dry cleaning job wasn’t much fun. It certainly wasn’t a bottle of Bolly and a ten inch vibrator. It wasn’t, even, Lauren and Denny by her side – her daughters, her family. She knew the owner, though, from the old days; the gig had been a favour, and she wasn’t about to throw it away. Jesus, she was a middle-aged con on the lam; she couldn’t afford to throw anything away.

*

When she’d first got to Spain, she’d looked around the shitty little rented room that from now on would be her home and, wrinkling her nose, had sat down on the bed to write Denny a postcard.

With love from Costa del Somefuckingplace, it read. Remember, Denny – NEVER do scared.

*

The owner of the shop was called Ted – another one who’d gone straight, only he’d done it way back when.

After a while, they got into a routine where they worked late together a few nights a week, cleared whatever jobs they could, and then sat at the counter in the shop. Everything was long locked up, so where the view from the window should be, there was only metal grating.

(If Yvonne ever felt panicked by that, well – she’d just take a longer than usual drink of the wine they shared, which always tasted a bit like instant coffee from the mugs.)

On this occasion, they’d been going over the accounts, but had almost immediately set the books aside.

“Penny for them?” Ted said, leaning towards her.

“Thanks,” she said, not without emotion. “For the job. And for not calling me Yvonne.”

Ted just smiled at her, and she smiled back, feeling clever and hawk-like from the wine.

Then she felt his hand, inching up her thigh.

“What the hell?” Wine sloshed over the side of her mug as she started.

“I…” He looked so lost that for a moment she almost felt something for him, wondered how it would be to invite someone into her little room, her bed. “I just thought…”

The moment passed.

“Yeah, well, next time, think a bit harder.” She bit down on the words. “I like you a lot, mate. Just not like that, okay? Don’t worry about it.”

When he brightened up a bit, sat up a bit, she delivered the final, necessary line. “But you fucking try that again, and I’ll use your bollocks for golf balls.”

They didn’t have their evenings at the counter anymore after that. Probably for the best, she thought.

*

‘You’re using all our good ingredients, though, yes? Much fresher than in England, I think.’

Magdalena worked at the dry cleaning place, too. She knew Yvonne by the name ‘Karen’, and that she’d come over from England: that was all. Yvonne didn’t know much about Magdalena, except that she was a single mother who worked almost as many shifts as Yvonne herself.

‘Actually, Maggie, if I’m honest, I can’t cook for shit.’

She couldn’t help but laugh at the look on her face, when she said that. ‘Well,’ the younger woman started, amazed. ‘I will have to teach you. What are you doing tonight?’

‘Nothing, as it happens,’ she replied. What did she ever do? She didn’t know anyone here, and however bloody wrinkly she was getting, she didn’t need another night with crosswords in bed.

*

Magdalena took her home, where she met her the rest of the family. That night, she mostly just chopped vegetables. Soon, though, she was cooking dinner for Magdalena herself, once a week or so.

She was good at haggling for ingredients at the market, too. Her Spanish might still be shit, but she’d always had that mix of mothering and flirting down, and it turned out it was perfect for dealing with a bit of the old Latin machismo.

If anyone asked, she would just have said it was good to get away from work, away from the ex-pat community. She would never have admitted that, just maybe, she was starting to feel like she belonged.

*

When Ted died, she was fucking terrified. Ted owned the shop – what would happen to it now? The funeral wasn’t the right time to bring it up, but she didn’t care. This was her life, her livelihood. She had a slightly less grotty room, now, and she had to pay for her grandkids’ Christmas presents next month – she needed that job.

‘You didn’t know?’ The daughter asked, looking up, surprised, to meet her eyes. “He left it to you. We can sign the paperwork tomorrow, if you like.”

*

You’ve still got it, you old slag, she said to herself in the mirror. Yvonne Atkins, middle-aged ex-con on the lam; grandmother; small business owner.

*

Maybe she’d just been too lucky for too long.

The day Karen Betts came into the dry cleaning shop, fussing with a dress she was carrying over her arm, her heart just – stopped. Yvonne was round the back before she even had time to think, doubling over as though in pain.

“Maggie –“ she managed to wheeze. “Customer-“

*

She asked her about it later, of course.

“Just a sudden bloody stomach pain, all right?” But Magdalena was used to her snapping, and just checked that she was still eating with the family on Monday.

*

Karen had looked good. She was always going to age well, probably. But she looked – happy.

Yvonne briefly savoured the thought of Karen taking down Fenner, once and for all. Of her getting her life back together. Then she told herself to think no more of it – the governor was just on holiday nearby, that was all. She’d probably never see her again.

That gave her another bloody twinge in the chest, but that must just have been heartburn.

*

When she left the shop, late as usual, after cashing up, she found Karen leaning against the wall smoking by the back door.

The old Yvonne, who was hard as anyone, would have threatened her. She would have known what to do: how to react when someone she didn’t want to see somehow managed to find her.

But even if she wasn’t far too old now for that kind of shit – well, Karen had never been intimidated by it anyway.

“What do you want?” She tried; it came out reassuringly gruff.

“I was just wondering,” Karen said, dropping her cigarette, “if you wanted to get a drink.”

*

Shockingly, she found that she did want to.

Karen took her to a nice place, actually – not touristy at all, and the booze was cheap.

Yvonne bought the first round in broken Spanish, flirting a bit with the bartender and feeling an odd kind of pride. She was then promptly shown up by Karen, of course, who was embarrassingly fluent.

Karen always could unsettle her a bit.

She said that she was staying at a friend’s house nearby. She didn’t say what kind of friend, but that seemed to be implied pretty strongly, so Yvonne didn’t push it.  
*

“So,” Karen slurred, a few hours later, when they’d caught up on the news. It seemed that the night was winding down. “Why did you call yourself Karen?”

Yvonne hadn’t really considered it, or at least she thought she hadn’t. But when she tried to hold Karen’s gaze, she felt the truth flicker in her eyes. They said: I remembered you, sometimes. It was a way to remember you.

And she might have been clever, all right, and quick, good at talking the talk, but it wasn’t often that she felt she hit on a good thought, a true thought. This one, however, seemed worth holding onto.

God, she was sloshed.

“I see.” Karen said, and it would have been steely, if she hadn’t hiccupped. “Come back to the house?”

*

The friend wasn’t there, as it turned out.

And god, Yvonne didn’t even like women. She might have been banged up on Dyke Row, but that just wasn’t her.

She did like sex, though, she mused, as Karen held her shoulders in a steely grip. She’d forgotten how much she liked sex.

*

Waking up, she couldn’t remember the last time she was so glad it was a Sunday.

Karen propped herself up on her elbow, already looking wide awake. Looking put back together again.

Feeling like somehow she had some ground to make up, with her hair all over the place, Yvonne Atkins said, “You’d better not go to the fuzz, all right? Or you can’t even imagine the things that will happen to you.”

“Breakfast, then?” Karen replied. “I think there’s coffee, too.”

She wondered if she was bloody well losing it, just letting Karen waltz into her life like this, offering a drink here, breakfast there.

*

Over coffee, Karen mentioned that she was leaving in a few days.

“But I will be back around May,” she added, lighting up a cigarette.

*

It wasn’t much of a goodbye, all things considered: Yvonne just let herself out when Karen excused herself for a swim. But then maybe it shouldn’t have been; last night could have been just another small event in what, as it turned out, was quite an ordinary life.

Walking down to the beach, seized with a sudden desire to see the sea in the winter sun, Yvonne remembered the tunnels under Larkhall, and getting on a ferry with her dodgy passport, and starting her new job. She didn’t think she would make it. She certainly didn’t deserve to make it.

But she was a tough old bird, and she’d managed to start again once. Looking at the Mediterranean, she allowed herself to consider that Karen, last night, May – that all of that was another beginning.


End file.
